Upcoming Wowhead Navigation Menu Redesign

Following the launch of Legion, the Wowhead team has been gathering data on how users find information on our site. Our goal is to provide the best possible information on WoW...but sometimes that information could be easier to find!\r\rIt soon became clear that the navigation bar and large vertical drop-down menus were in need of a fresh coat of paint. We have a few proposed changes in store:\rDropdown menus have been redesigned to take up less vertical space and look more modern. As the site has expanded over time the menus have also grown larger, making some menus especially unruly.\rThe navigation bar has expanded to have one row for important parts of the site (eg Database, Tools), and a new row for popular current content (Emerald Nightmare, Mythic+). This should make things less visually cluttered, especially for non-English locales.\rThe new content navigation bar has images for easier browsing. The announcement bar with class and boss icons was very large, but it was effective at getting people to click on topics that were historically ignored on the navigation bar. We've incorporated some of these graphics onto the new content navigation bar, which will be updated for current and popular content.\r\rHere are some sample screenshots of the redesign, showing off the revamped Database dropdown menu and new navigation row for important content and guides:\r \r\rWhile under-utilized, the navigation bar has been a constant on the site for many years and we wanted to give everyone a heads up before making the change. Thanks for the feedback!

Комментарии

Комментарий от Trick83

Комментарий от lankybrit

on 2016-10-17T12:53:03-05:00

Excellent stuff. That single column pull-down was becoming unmanageable.

Комментарий от perculia

on 2016-10-17T12:55:40-05:00

Yay!... as long as the colors don't change.\r\rThe screenshots are taken directly from our testing server so the colors shouldn't be different. The only thing that would change as far as colors are the graphics behind the featured content - eg we'd have a Karazhan graphic when we rotate a Karazhan menu in.\r\rWe have gotten some requests for a light background\/dark text to help with colorblind users which is something we are discussing, but it would not replace the default site color and that would still be a ways off.

Комментарий от baradiel

on 2016-10-17T13:17:15-05:00

Love the design!\r\rWowhead doing a good job as always!

Комментарий от SoCalWoWGal

on 2016-10-17T13:20:20-05:00

How will the redesign affect the mobile version of the site?\r\rIf the redesign impacts the mobile site, would you please provide screenshots to how the mobile site will look?\r\rOtherwise, the redesign on the desktop site looks great!

Комментарий от bear4x

on 2016-10-17T13:20:50-05:00

While improving your navigation menu, you should also reduce the resources your website takes. \r\rIn the last few days (only in the last few days), every time I go to a wowhead page, I get a period of Firefox saying "there is no response". It clears after 15 seconds or so.\r\rEven before that, your website was the slowest one I know for loading each page I go to. But it has gotten worse.\r\rI think it means that just loading your main page loads hundreds of other things automatically...firefox can't keep up. Please try to improve that - autoload fewer things.

Комментарий от vambora

on 2016-10-17T13:21:13-05:00

Any changes are welcome especially after swapping the easy yet powerful "vanilla" layout (http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/AlhlzvB.png) for this bloated as hell layout.

Комментарий от archaicwonder

on 2016-10-17T13:30:20-05:00

Good UX is hard, good luck!

Комментарий от FreeZeMaN55

on 2016-10-17T13:34:58-05:00

Such design, much web 2.0 :)

Комментарий от perculia

on 2016-10-17T13:40:52-05:00

Any changes are welcome especially after swapping the easy yet powerful "vanilla" layout (http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/AlhlzvB.png) for this bloated as hell layout.

Clicking on "Database" or the Legion Database graphic on the right-hand side will take you to a more pared-down site map.

Unfortunately as Blizzard keeps adding more and more of Wowhead's database functionality to their in-game dungeon journal (bosses, spells, item drops, filters, legendaries, itemsets), our traffic for basic database lookups declines...not among core site users who regularly visit, or players that want info explained by comments...but among the general playerbase. So we've had to grow and emphasize new features and guides on the site to show we're still providing key information players are after, which in turn brings the revenue in so we can expand the team, bring in more paid writers, fund the annual BlizzCon party etc. A database-centric layout would hurt us during year-long content droughts or lose players that don't necessarily want to look up a specific piece of data, but want to know how a new concept in an expansion works. Looking at analytics, we've found that the new layout has helped us meet those goals, but since some players really just want the database, and they tend to be dedicated site users, we set up the site map last year.

How will the redesign affect the mobile version of the site?

If the redesign impacts the mobile site, would you please provide screenshots to how the mobile site will look?

Otherwise, the redesign on the desktop site looks great!

The new sections will be added to the current menu that opens on-tap on the upper left-hand side. It shouldn't be drastically different.

While improving your navigation menu, you should also reduce the resources your website takes.

In the last few days (only in the last few days), every time I go to a wowhead page, I get a period of Firefox saying "there is no response". It clears after 15 seconds or so.

Even before that, your website was the slowest one I know for loading each page I go to. But it has gotten worse.

I think it means that just loading your main page loads hundreds of other things automatically...firefox can't keep up. Please try to improve that - autoload fewer things.

We have a recent feedback thread about some optimizations we've made in response to user feedback, and what sorts of things are harder to change (resources related to ads). Other optimizations in the past few months have included a new system for YouTube embeds, less articles on the front page, and pared-down graphics here and there (eg Legion Information used to have a graphic of Illidan behind the guide links). One thing we still want to work on are a new image upload and embed system. Last year we updated our modelviewer preview tech to show high-definition images, but our system lags behind in presenting large images efficiently.

Комментарий от rodalpho

on 2016-10-17T13:48:10-05:00

One suggestion, in the menu for each class and spec, can you also link to the artifact calculator?

Комментарий от moosecat11

on 2016-10-17T14:00:12-05:00

One suggestion, in the menu for each class and spec, can you also link to the artifact calculator?\r\rI second this. It would be great to have a link directly to the calc for that spec's artifact.

Комментарий от perculia

on 2016-10-17T14:01:03-05:00

One suggestion, in the menu for each class and spec, can you also link to the artifact calculator?\r\rTalking to Jerek about this now - we agree it would be good to have the calculators linking to each spec somewhere easily.

Комментарий от ArgentSun

on 2016-10-17T14:02:46-05:00

Overall, I think I like the changes. I have a few concerns, however.\r\rI am not sure the categories under the Database menu are the best possible ones (though I understand they are just the current ones, shifted around). Changing them would require a much larger site redesign, however, and I don't even know if others feel similarly.\r\rI also don't know how the nested dropdowns will look like. e.g. what happens if I mouse over Achievements? Will the subsequent dropdowns remain vertical, or will they also adopt a more... horizontal... layout? And in either layout, how will the newly spawn menus overlay with the top-level ones? I can easily see this getting confusing, users having to distinguish between the submenus they spawned by mousing over an item, and the top-level submenus. Am I making sense here?\r\rFinally, although I wouldn't be as... blunt as user vambora, I kind of agree with their sentiment. The website has felt clunkier ever since the news-first layout was adopted. I like the old, Google-like, homepage much better - and to this day I interact with the search bar (and, I confess, the navigation bar) far more than I do with everything else combined. Maybe we can see its return as a non-default alternative to the current one?\r\rRegardless of how much of this feedback is taken to heart, I have one other piece that could go well with this release. Something I've missed for a long time is the ability to jump directly to the search and\/or navigation bar from anywhere on the site. Most notably, if I am somewhere in the comments, or in the middle of a blog post, I have to either manually scroll to the top or hit the Home key in order to get to the top bars (which sounds awfully spoiled, but UX is all about minimizing unnecessary actions). I think I would like to see the search and navigation bars float on top regardless of where I am. Or, alternatively, see a "Back to Top" button in more places (I think I only see it in guides right now). \r\rI guess what I am finding out is that access to the Search and (expanded) Navigation bars is more important to me than almost anything else on the homepage.

Комментарий от rodalpho

on 2016-10-17T14:09:17-05:00

Cool, honestly my usage on wowhead is split 50\/50 between looking at comments for whatever WQ I'm trying to locate the path to and the talent\/artifact calculators for my alts.

Edit: I don't know why this reply is at the end of the thread, I clicked reply to your comment Perculia. Weird!

Комментарий от rodalpho

Комментарий от sgtevmckay

Some of the current menu structure extends below my screen so I am very much looking forward to the new changes.....many thanks

Комментарий от Coldleo

on 2016-10-17T14:16:11-05:00

Any way you could remove the Wowhead Weekly from this user? I dont really watch it or care for it.

Комментарий от Grolee

on 2016-10-17T14:24:46-05:00

I don't have any trouble loading Wowhead pages in Firefox.

Комментарий от ArgentSun

on 2016-10-17T14:24:58-05:00

@Argentsun, try this link from earlier in the thread:\r\rhttp:\/\/www.wowhead.com\/database\r\rYeah, that reply showed up while I was writing my comment. Unfortunately, it doesn't do the trick for me. It is lighter than than the homepage, but it is no less cluttered, and it is obviously not designed as a replacement homepage. I understand revenue, however, and the fact of the matter is that I would continue visiting Wowhead even if it had animated GIFs in the background; I just wish there was a good way to allow for both a lightweight homepage (I honestly think Search bar + Navigation Bar is over 90% of what I need; the other 10% being a stream of blog titles) and a more... comprehensive one to coexist. \r\rBut don't mind me (too much), I've been using the website for close to a decade now, I am practically a grumpy old man around here :)